Audley Harrison is sitting at the side of the ring tying his boxing boots. His
four-year-old daughter, Ariella, is clambering over his neck and back.

His wife, Raychel, potters about in the background handing out T-shirts to members of the camp and presenting a scene of domestic gaiety at odds with the violent backdrop.

It throws up a question. Why is Harrison doing this? Why does he continue to submit to the demands of ring combat when he has money in the bank and when a large chunk of the boxing audience has already drawn a negative conclusion about his capabilities? As ever with Harrison, there is an answer. As ever, it is a long one.

Our loquacious hero arrives in London next week to begin the choreographed countdown to his Nov 13 date with David Haye for the World Boxing Council heavyweight title in Manchester.

Harrison is a heavy underdog. A puncher's chance is the most the boxing forums allow. Yet for the past six weeks he has been billeted on the side of a mountain in Big Bear, southern California, running up hills and talking up prospects.

The gym is austere in location and design, a big, red barn in the middle of nowhere. Haye is training in the shadow of the Palace of Westminster, Audley on the wild frontier.

The setting, a dead end off a remote mountain road, might be a metaphor for Harrison's career. That, at least, is how the majority see it. Not him. Harrison remains glued to the powerful idea of destiny, as if he is merely the passive agent in a story foretold by a greater authority.

The pattern of his life, of his career, could not have been any other way. This fatalistic schema packages the past conveniently, relieving Harrison of any responsibility for the bits that went wrong. It also places a positive twist on the future, particularly the outcome of his duel with Haye at the MEN Arena.

"I already know what is going to happen. He can't beat me. There is no plan. I trust in myself to do what I was born to do. I have a God-given talent. My tools are too much for David."

This we have heard ad infinitum. I put this to him. Is he not engaged in a grand delusion? Why should we invest in what Harrison says as opposed to what his record tells us? The evidence is there: four defeats on a personal inventory not littered with world-class victims.

"You don't have to. There are no accidents in life. I was Olympic champion for a reason. I'm challenging for the world title for a reason. You cannot have what you want until you are ready for it. The universe gives you everything, but you have to be ready to take it."

An interview with Harrison is like a sparring session. If only he would take the same forward thrust into the ring. Where is the equivalent, visceral desire to win? Why has he not released the potential inherent in a frame that extends over 6ft 6in and 17 stones.

I also put this to him. Again, he is having none of it. "Why do they call it the sweet science? It's not all about 'arghhhh'! I gave up 'ruthless' when I stopped robbing kids on the streets as a teenager. I gave up 'hate' when I stopped behaving like a playboy to women. You don't need to be like that.

"I have a huge love for people, love for my wife, for my daughter. Love is a more powerful tool than hate. I feel no vengeance towards people, only compassion."

You are probably thinking what I was thinking. What place has such pastoral sentiment in a boxing ring? What possible use can it be against the fast hands and hunger of Haye?

Plenty, according to Harrison. "I'm going to knock out Haye with compassion. And when he is down on that canvas I am going to reach out to him and pull him to his feet."

There is no knowing what to make of that. The San Bernardino Mountains sit two hours' drive to the east of Los Angeles. Scenes from David Lynch's cult Nineties oddity Twin Peaks were shot here. Harrison's pronouncements on the progress of his zeitgeist place him firmly among the subjects worthy of Lynch's surreal profiling.

Harrison understands his career as a divine continuum of predetermined events, leading him to Haye. He is a classic English eccentric, sufficiently removed from the common lot to consider himself attached to a unique reality ordained by God.

He reaches into his pocket to produce a mobile phone. On the display is a photo of a line he scribbled a year ago predicting his candidacy for BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2010. The scrap of paper has acquired for him the significance of some hallowed parchment.

"I prayed that I would beat David Haye. Do I deserve this good fortune? Damn right, I do. Ten years is how long it has taken me to reach this point. Nothing happens before it is meant to be. I understand that now."

An aphorismic infrastructure pervades the Harrison camp. He works out in a T-shirt bearing the Barack Obama mantra "Yes I can". Notes along the gym walls exhort him to noble action. If only in words, Napoleon Bonaparte made it this far west: "He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat."

Harrison has had his share of those. The one that hurts most was inflicted by the BBC when they elected not to continue with his multi-million contract.

"There are two low points in my career. The first was when Peter Salmon told me, three days before the Tomasz Bonin fight, that the BBC would not be renewing. The other was signing for Frank Warren. That, to me, was surrender and it broke my heart."

Harrison admits not to mistakes but naivety. He claims he was right to seek to promote his own shows from the beginning and "not to bend over and let the system shaft me".

His message was killed by hubris; his cry for freedom interpreted as a giant ego flex. The fans turned against him and, after the BBC said no, he began his long, inexorable slide into the margins. Again, he does not account for the decline by his own failings but by circumstance. What sound like excuses to us are merely explanations to him.

He returns to the spotlight ranked 42nd in the world, a detail to which he attaches nil significance. In his own world he is where he has always been, No 1. You want him to succeed but fear a desperate end. The rank hooliganism of Haye's tasteless rhetoric assures Harrison of the neutral vote, and maybe a round of applause on the way to the ring.

In the ears of most, such applause echoes sympathy. In Harrison's, it heralds his coronation. He is right about this: victory would not only constitute one of the more remarkable revivals in British boxing history, a point which offers its own commentary on Harrison's present status. It would also catapult him onto the BBC stage in December. A personality he undeniable is. And he does have a puncher's chance.

From Audley to fraudley

Audley Harrison rose to fame after at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 where he became the first British fighter to win superheavyweight gold.

Banking on his success, Harrison, now an MBE, released his autobiography Realising the Dream and signed a £1 million contract with BBC to broadcast his first 10 fights. The boxer however, was widely mocked for the low quality of his opponents, giving rise to the uncharitable nickname of ‘Fraudley’.

One contest against Mathew Ellis in Bethnal Green in 2003 led to a ringside riot with Herbie Hide. Thereafter, Harrison relocated to the US.

Harrison had 17 fights on the network before BBC Sport pulled all boxing from their programming – a decision the London-born fighter said had more to do with race than boxing ability.

By December 2008, Harrison’s career seemed all but over as he was defeated by Belfast taxi driver, Martin Rogan.

In Oct 2009, Harrison won the eight-man, one-night knockout tournament, Prizefighter, and went on to beat old foe Michael Sprott with a knock-out in the final round for the vacant EBU title, despite trailing on the judges’ cards. He relinquished it to go for the WBA title against David Haye.

Haye v Harrison, 'Best of Enemies', is exclusively live on Sky Box Office HD and also available on Sky 3D. To order the fight call: 08442 410888